Adopted kids sold off for body parts

The crimes were uncovered after the mutilated corpse of a three-year-old was found battered and burned.

Police fear the sick pair may have adopted dozens of impoverished children from orphanages in eastern Europe so they could sell their body parts on the black market.

Terrible

A two-year-old girl called Erica was saved after Russian police swooped on the pair’s home in Moscow.

Detectives found £60,000, fake identity cards and evidence of bribes to officials.

Officers were last night interrogating economist Vladimir Grechushkin, 32, and his wife Aerime, 21, in a bid to uncover where other bodies are dumped and just how many there are.

At least one adopted son Oleg, two, died mysteriously on a trip to Thailand, but his body was quickly cremated.

Police believe many of the victims’ organs were sold in south-east Asia for transplants or eaten in perverted cult rituals.

Some may even have ended up in Britain. Three of the couple’s children were taken from poverty-stricken Moldova, but detectives fear they adopted dozens from other poor countries using fake identities.

Grechushkin had a forged document claiming he and Aerime, who is now pregnant, could not have children.

Moldovan adoption official Tatiana Silayeva, who gave the couple permission to adopt from her country, said: “They had no children.

“The only thing that slightly concerned us was that they had married recently, so why would they want children straight away? But they explained that they had been living together for a considerable time.”